On a similar note, I notice a sinister thread of violence winding its way among the anecdotes concerning Daughters X and Y at alameida's Other Blog Which Shall Not Be Named. Is this a trend? Are my nieces going to start coming after me with pretend pickaxes?
A friend of the family explained to us once that kids are always going to want to play with guns. Even if you keep all guns and gun-like things out of the house, they'll shoot each other with Barbies. So the rule in her household is that you aren't allowed to pretend to shoot people with guns, only monsters.
I spent my days pretending to be a barbarian princess who trampled her enemies under the hooves of her horse. This was in 1980 or thereabouts.
The poison sprinkles is a nice touch, though. I'm glad the younger generation of young women has what it takes to get ahead!
I wa the princess with the beautiful dress with the jewels that matched perfectly and was the princess of amazing power! who kicked ass and looked ravishing all the same. Poison sprinkles is clearly the next step in the arms race, but I would not underestimate magic wands and toy pistols and their likelihood of banishing evil dragons.
...the little crew as the played in the backyard
the s/b they.
I'm honored to make it up from the comments at Unfogged.
That carrot makes me think she'll be responsible for the next Columbine. Sure, it's "fake," but so are the helpy-chalk's brood's guns. Next thing you know, the whole lot of 'em will be trying to sneak toothpaste on planes...
Hey, who deleted the poop & cheesegrater post from 10-30-05? RHC needs to keep his daughter away from that guy.
Away from the guy who grates poop onto pastries, or from the deletor/deletrix of said post? (Hey how weird is it that OED lists no agentive noun for "delete"? Am I hallucinating?)
I guess the only solution is to use "expurgator/trix". Oh wll.
This is a good book about violent/gruesome play among kids. Short message: it's fine.
Short message: it's fine
Also: amusing.
long message: it's super fun and amusing, but not if it involves actual animals.
Speaking of animals, what ever happened to Emerson's bestiality thing?
It got converted into an in-joke.
Man, I played war all the time as a kid. Sticks could be guns and pine cones bombs. Of course I had a lot of fake guns. And when the kid down the street got real, deactivated, guns and grenades, so much the better. While I am A Serious Badass Mutherfucker No Dobut About It, I'm not particularly violent. Of course, early on, I took very seriously the notion that fighting was a means of last resort. If I had to guess, I'd say it was because that lesson was repeated from so many angles (parents, teachers, TV*, movies*, church). On this general subject, I think David Grossman's Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill is invaluable.
*where, of course, gratuitous violence also abounds, and surely more so today.
18 -- "church" s/b "church*"
Obviously kids are going to play violently; they have hostiile feelings like anyone else, and violent play/stories is a way to process it, no?
Sure, and we parents make ourselves obnoxious by smiling at the evergreen earnest attempts to suppress it.
Any time my kids play violent, I smack 'em around.
You may leave them with little choice but to poison your ice cream.
...for poisonous tamperings
In my neighborhood, toy guns have largely been replaced by toy swords, especially toy lightsabers. Toy swords hurt more than toy guns.
Of course, early on, I took very seriously the notion that fighting was a means of last resort
Poof.
26: "In my neighborhood..."
This comment is one of those "there's, uhhh, a friend of mine, yeah, who really likes this girl and doesn't know how to tell her" situations, isn't it?
Oh no! Now we'll never know who's a cunt and who isn't!
And where did all this salmon come from?
27- unless. of course, you are at a concert and backed up by some butch lesbians,.
I'm not worried about the pretend violence (much) but I am worried about it when it takes on a militaristic form. I can deal with the ice cream with poison sprinkles (basically) but I really don't want them playing army. I don't want them growing up thinking that this part of human society is acceptable. I haven't been a dictator about it, I just try to steer them away from military imagery.
Similarly, I try to steer Caroline away from the princess stuff, or at least try to mitigate the underlying patriarchy. I ask things like "Why can't the princess ask the prince to the ball." A. rolls her eyes at me when I say this kind of thing, but Caroline listens. (A's mom is pretty much on the same page of the parenting manual as we are, so I feel comfortable making suggestions like that when it is my turn to watch the kids.)
I do some serious princess mocking. Sally woke up a couple of weeks ago, stretched, and pulled a scissors out from under her hip -- she'd been doing something crafty in bed and hadn't put the scissors away. This turned into a fullscale discussion of how annoying it must be not to be able to sleep if there's even a pea under the stack of twenty feather beds you're sleeping on, and how glad Sally is not to be that sort of a princess.
You can't hug children with nuclear arms.
toy guns have largely been replaced by toy swords, especially toy lightsabers. Toy swords hurt more than toy guns.
This is probably a good thing, actually.
Re. military play: yeah, it bugs me too, and PK does like to draw soldiers of late. But I know he's not a psychopath, and I figure it meets some need: he seems to be trying to work through the idea of protecting people, being part of a group, the idea of good and bad and how to tell the difference. And of course it's also exciting. The thing is, though, I've realized how much soldier imagery is everywhere: in Pirates of the Caribbean, in Star Wars an Star Trek, on the news (of course). Plus he knows his father was in the AF. And yet he also knows that we think of war as a very bad thing and all that. I think he needs the space to think his way through this stuff, so even though it kind of bothers me, I'm letting him do it (currently there are four drawings of soldiers on the floor in front of me) and trying to hear what he has to say about it and answer his questions.
I ask things like "Why can't the princess ask the prince to the ball."
My childhood version went like this: first, you ride your bicycles around the backyard very fast and whoosh! you get sucked into Candyland. Which has a road made out of taffy. The taffy makes your bike sticky so you have to drive it wobbly over the grass and then you have to fall over. Then you fight the Lemon Drop King because... he's locked up the princes and you need to save them. But before you save the princes, you get to pick your gown color and what sort of jewels you want to wear.
(This is basically Charlie and the Chocolate Factory meets Disney's Sleeping Beauty. With no parental involvement.)
And if you had an umbrella, you could push the button but leave the umbrella bundled up. Snap-hiss-hrrmmmmmmmmmmmm instant lightsabre battles on the way to school.